In the name of Allah, most gracious and most merciful,
Thanks to Allah I have managed to succeed on the tenth day of the 40-day challenge. Although I had a big challenge with solving a problem, I understood why this happened, and I thought about how could I prevent this from happening again in the future. Moreover, an urgent situation happened that changed my challenge actions which is still considered a success for me. In this post, I will share the challenge I faced, the proposed solution, the urgent situation I encountered, the key takeaways from these things, and some useful information that I learned.
Table of Contents
1. The Challenge
Today’s main challenge was that I wasn’t interested at all while doing my task. It was a difficult one. Basically, it was a bug in a software I have built. Although I tracked the bug and knew exactly its source, I found that the function I have built is prone to errors since it failed on an edge case. I further tested it and found that I have messed up with its logic. I kept thinking on paper, on something like a whiteboard and searched a little bit online but nothing work. It was a strange thing. The problem was that I was not interested at all. I found it so difficult for myself to find a solution. In other words, my mood was not good today. When one’s mood is not good, and he surrenders to its negativity, it propagates throughout the day and increases. If he kept acting negatively, the problem will grow to the extent that it seems impossible to handle it although this is usually not the case. It hinders his productivity and creative thinking. The problem is not the problem, but the attitude towards it, and the negative thinking.
How did it all start? I started working late in the morning than I usually do but I was motivated. However, when I faced the bug and kept trying to solve it and understood that I have to recode this whole piece of code, the burden increased. I saw it as a problem and not a challenge to learn from it and grow. I was negatively thinking. But why did this negative thinking happen in the first place? Because I ate in the break when I was not really hungry. Although I ate a little, and my stomach wasn’t full at all, still some of my mental energy has been directed towards ingesting food. My focus and motivation decreased. One bad decision could blow up your day. When I was faced with a difficult problem that needs focus, it was difficult to solve it using my current mental energy. It needs sharper focus. After thinking for a while, I was completely unmotivated, and I went to take a nap. The nap time increased up to 2.5 hours so it was not a nap, but deep sleep. This means waking up sleepier, a lot of wasted time, and even more negativity started to propagate. Again, it all started with one bad decision.
Throughout the day I was still stuck in the problem. I tried to even go and do another task, but then I was not even engaged at all in that task. Again, if you didn’t start correctly, it is really difficult to continue correctly although it is not impossible. So I decided to return back to my task, and still no solution to the problem. The day was coming to an end, and I was really lagging behind in the number of hours I should actually learn. My stomach now became emptier, and I decided that I have to rethink again, take it easy, and think what could I do. I know that it is solvable and that I could continue with the challenge. Time is still there, and I know I could do it.
However, one of my close relatives has had to take a critical decision in his life. He wanted to share with me what he was thinking of. Here came a critical rare situation that I have to urgently handle. When things like this happen, my priority is definitely to help others so I immediately visited him and I spent the rest of the day with him and his family talking about his critical situation. It was a really difficult decision, and I even myself couldn’t reach the final best decision. However, I was thinking with him, understood his point, and his family’s point, and tried to think with them and to make him and his family reach at least a common understanding because his opinion was different from his family’s opinion. Although I didn’t solve the problem, at least I tried to do what I could do, and more importantly, he felt that I am closer to him, and I am here to help him whenever a difficult situation arises although I am very busy. That matters a lot. Here comes your priorities, and your principles. The why I mentioned in this post of the challenge, is what should drive my decisions, and that is why I started with it. Why am I doing all that?
We are humans, and we couldn’t expect every situation. My success is not to finish the whole challenge at the expense of not helping others who need my help. If someone needs my help, I have to find the time to help him, and now my success and my challenge is to help him although this is not written in this first post, this is something that is based on my why, and the principle I follow throughout my life. Even I wrote this blog post the next day (the eleventh day of the challenge) because I came late home from my relative’s visit. No problem at all for me. I consider this as a success in the challenge which is the challenge to make the right decision in critical situations and to be there when someone really needs your help.
2. The Proposed Solution
Although I didn’t continue my daily challenge according to how I defined it in that post because of the urgent situation that happened, I consider myself succeeded because of taking the right decision although I was busy.
In addition to this, based on the challenge I faced at the start of this day, here is the proposed solution to prevent this from happening again:
- It is always better for me to start early. So, if possible, start as early as possible and gain inertia to continue your day correctly.
- Don’t eat when you are not hungry.
- Never sleep when you are not in the mood given that you have had a good night sleep. Maybe take a good break that will refresh you because you are still awake and could return back to work after a certain time. However, if you slept and you are in a bad mood, you may keep snoozing the alarm, the number of sleeping hours increase, you enter into deep sleep then maybe you will wake up still feeling sleepy, and in an even worse mode because you have wasted more time.
3. Key Takeaways
- Know your why. This will help you take good decisions in difficult situations. It will support you, and motivate you when you face big challenges.
- Helping others who really need your help is super important whatever busy you are. Even if you won’t necessarily help them to find a final solution, when they feel that you are next to them, they will really appreciate this and you may make things much better for them just by listening to them. This really matters. Be compassionate towards them, and know that we are all humans and that you are one of them. Imagine that you are in their situation. We are weak, and what supports us is not our confidence and our commitment but the help of our creator “Allah”. If you want to understand more what I mean, you could read this post.
- Most people want to feel important. If you want to have a good relationship with anyone, listen to them with compassion, let them finish all what they want to say, and put yourself in their situation. And see how you can help them. Seek first to understand then to be understood.
- Try to start early to gain inertia, don’t sleep unless you really need it, and don’t eat when you are not hungry.
4. Useful Pieces of Information
- We think in pictures. We convert words into pictures. When you speak it is like you are drawing a picture to your audience so carefully choose your vocabulary and avoid hurting others by your words. Choose good words.
- When you speak, it is not about the difficult vocab that you use, but it as about choosing the simple words that makes everyone understand, and most importantly to make your words convey the correct message with the correct feeling. How you say your words matters a lot.
- To affect others with your words, you should first apply what you say. If you advise someone with an advise that you don’t apply, they may not be as affected and touched as when you apply what you advise them to do. Words are not the only messages, but the context in which they are said and the authenticity with which you give the pieces of advice while feeling compassionate to others could even be more important.
- Change your wordings to be positive, and to encourage you to find solutions and inspire others for example see the differences between these wordings and judge by yourself:
- We have a problem Vs We have a challenge
- You must do this work Vs It is your mission to do this work greatly
- This is not my business, I don’t know how to help you Vs Although I am not an expert in this think but let us think together and see if we could find a solution
- No one did this before. Forget about this idea. Vs No one did this before, so let us experiment and see what we could reach. It may turn out to be a great idea.
- People are usually like us. They are kind, and cheerful. They are your mirror. If you dealt with them nicely they could be very nice as well, and vice versa. If you found them in hardships or acting in a bad manner, just assume that maybe there is another problem in their life that has propagated throughout their day which made their behavior that bad. So be compassionate to them, and understand that this may actually be not their normal attitude at all.
Finally
Thank you. I hope this post has been beneficial to you. I would appreciate any comments if anyone needed more clarifications or if anyone has seen something wrong in what I have written in order to modify it, and I would also appreciate any possible enhancements or suggestions. We are humans, and errors are expected from us, but we could also minimize those errors by learning from our mistakes and by seeking to improve what we do.
Allah bless our master Muhammad and his family.
